Flat Is the New Fair

Is President Obama paving the way for GOP tax reform?

STEPHEN MOORE

'Suddenly, liberal Democrats are making the same argument about the tax code that I've been making for 20 years," laughs former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey. "Welcome to the party." Mr. Armey, who along with Steve Forbes has been the torch bearer for the flat tax since the early 1990s, believes that the latest applause line from President Obama that "billionaires should pay the same tax rate as janitors" may be the political gateway to sweeping tax reform.

Mr. Forbes sees an opening here too and says: "The flat tax is the perfect issue for these times. It fixes the economy and doesn't cost a dime." He's right. It's the teed-up GOP response to a jobless recovery and the near-universal sentiment among voters that the tax code is corrupt beyond repair.

That case is inadvertently helped as Mr. Obama and his new best friend, billionaire Warren Buffett, barnstorm the country trashing the tax system for, as the Oracle of Omaha puts it, "coddling the super rich." In truth, the system isn't nearly as skewed in favor of those at the top of the income pyramid as they allege: Today the top 1% pay 38% of the income tax. But in Washington, perception drives policy. The virtue of a flat tax with no deductions is that it provides an ironclad guarantee that the rich pay no lower a tax rate than janitors and secretaries.

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This past summer the Senate Budget Committee, which is run by Democrats, reported that 26.5% of all tax deductions and credits are taken by those with incomes in the top 1% on the wealth scale. Cleaning out the attic of decades of these loopholes and using the savings to lower the tax rate ensures that Mr. Buffett, Bill Gates and Lady Gaga pay their fair share.

Mr. Obama complains in his budget that it's not fair that the rich get to deduct 35% for their mansions and charitable receipts, while the middle class deducts only 15% or 20%. But that's the collateral damage from a multitiered tax-rate system.

Democrat Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, says that loopholes are "subsidies, and subsidies are not the type of thing that you want for an efficient market system." He sounds like Milton Friedman there and he proposes to reduce "tax expenditures" by 17%.

Why stop there? Republicans should counter-offer: We see your 17% and raise it to 100%.

Done correctly, the flat tax eliminates all double taxation of saving and investment. But if liberals won't accept a lower tax rate for capital gains and dividends, perhaps the grand deal in Washington could be to tax everything at 16% or 17%.

Democrats have come to a different conclusion: They want to get rid of the deductions and raise tax rates at the same time. When has that ever worked? The near 100-year history of the tax code teaches this inviolable law of politics: The higher the tax rate, the more tax carve-outs there will be for yacht owners. That is why the rich paid a smaller share of the income tax in the early 1960s when the top tax rate was 91%, and in the 1970s with a 70% rate, than they do today with a 35% rate.

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Reuters

Flat-tax proponent and former presidential candidate Steve Forbes

That's why the flat tax is the fairest tax of all. The combination of a single tax rate with a family-size allowance—shielding, say, the first $35,000 of income for a family of four—ensures that everyone would pay the same marginal tax rate above that level. A family of four with an income of $70,000 would pay an average tax rate of about 8.5%, whereas the members of the Buffett billionaire club would pay 17%.

Why aren't Republicans in Congress and in the presidential race making this case? Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman have tax rate reform proposals that move toward a flatter tax. But the candidate who comes closest to a true flat tax is Herman Cain, the former Godfather's Pizza CEO. His argument for a "9-9-9" plan puts the current income and payroll taxes in the shredder and replaces them with a 9% personal income tax with no deductions, a 9% net business income tax, and a 9% national sales tax.

That would be rocket fuel for the economy, though the combination of a federal sales tax and an income tax is a big worry. But at least Mr. Cain has super-sized solutions to an economy with super-sized problems.

"I keep waiting for a Republican candidate to take the plunge," says a half-frustrated Steve Forbes. Then he adds one more flat tax selling point: "You know it ends all this crony capitalism in Washington. From now on, if Obama invites you to the White House, you'd know it's because he really loves you."